


ice ice baby

by hockeydyke



Series: Managerial Notes and Other Bullshit [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: College Hockey, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Past Relationship(s), Shenanigans, Slice of Life, Sports, The Haus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 17:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11166738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeydyke/pseuds/hockeydyke
Summary: Ford spent a minute skimming the description paragraph.“So you just, like, stick them in ice and that helps them?”“Yeah, man. A lot of contact sports do it. They’ll be a lot less sore tomorrow because of it.”“Don’t they spend enough time around ice already?”“Uh, yeah. But they like it or something. Don’t worry about it.”(Lardo's collected all of her SMH-management-related tips to give to Ford. In this installment (one of many, many topics Lardo covers), we learn about the complicated set of rules that go along with team ice baths)





	ice ice baby

**Author's Note:**

> Entirely based on my experience with ice baths on a rugby team. We used them when we had multiple days of games at a tournament, since they apparently do a lot to keep you from getting sore the next day, and since rugby is a pretty brutal full contact sport, so anything helps. Same goes for a lot of sports. You know when professional hockey players do that fancy cryogenics thing where they stand around in freezing cold tubes (no? It's like this https://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2017/01/18/karl-alzner-chills-out-in-a-cryotherapy-chamber/ )? This is just the cheap college version of that.
> 
> Credit, as always, goes to the amazing Ngozi.

After working at Haus kitchen table for a few hours, Ford had gotten to the point where her attempts to finish her course readings had ended and a Buzzfeed marathon had begun. She was just loading another episode of Ladylike when she was startled by a large binder clattering onto the table in front of her.

When she recovered from her heart skipping at least two beats she looked up to see Lardo standing across from her at the other side of the table, examining her nail polish while she waited for Ford to speak.

“Um. What’s this?”

Lardo took this as an invitation to sit down across from her. “Managerial Notes and Other Bullshit. It’s everything you need to deal with these doofuses. I mean, you can always text me about stuff, but I had a lot of notes, so I figured I might as well pass them on.”

Ford lifted the binder and examined it closely: black plastic, with the title scrawled on the front in metallic Sharpie. Two inch spine, and completely full. “Thanks, I think? This is a lot.”

“Yeah, well-- they’re a lot to handle. Trust me. You’ll need it.”

Ford cautiously unclipped a section of papers from the binder.. “Did you alphabetize this?”

Lardo shrugged. “I mean, sort of? I organized all the notes and typed them up, and then I had Ransom put them in order. Each section has a little description of the topic, and then all the tips I’ve put together.”

“Oh, wow! This is incredible. It’s like in Night at the Museum.” She looked up at Lardo as soon as she spoke, biting her lip. What an awful movie to reference.

Thankfully, Lardo cackled. “Yeah, don’t let a fuckin’ monkey tear this to pieces, okay? But if it does happen, god forbid, I do have, like, a digital copy.” She shook her head, mumbling, “This could be a fucking thesis, with all the effort I’ve put into it.”

Ford nodded and cautiously unclipped a section of papers from the binder, reading the header aloud: “Section 48: Ice Baths and Related Tips.” She glanced up at Lardo, raising an eyebrow.

“Read the description. I know it’s weird, but they swear by it.”

Ford nodded and spent a minute skimming the description paragraph.“So you just, like, stick them in ice and that helps them?”

“Yeah, man. A lot of contact sports do it. They’ll be a lot less sore tomorrow because of it.”

“Don’t they spend enough time around ice already?”

“Uh, yeah. But they like it or something. Don’t worry about it.”

And with that she was gone. Ford settled back down and looked back down at the binder. It looked like she had a lot of reading to do.

 

**48a. No sharing tubs.**

Lardo was new to this job, but she had enough common sense to realize when things were off. Sometimes she felt like a babysitter watching a group of kids who always insisted that their parents let them do this or that, and she had to figure out whether they were telling the truth or completely bullshitting her.

This was one of those times. Next up for ice baths were Ransom and… Holster? She was pretty sure that was what they called each other. Hell if she knew which was which, though. That was beside the point: Ransom and Holster, the giant defensemen who she didn’t want to admit kind of intimidated her, had just climbed into the ice bath tub together.

“Uh,” she started, not quite sure how to deal with the situation. Maybe this was normal? These two were freshmen like her, but it was already a month into the season. They’d done this before, with the temporary manager who’d lasted only a few weeks before he quit without notice. “Are you supposed to be doing them together?”

“Of course we are!” The blond insisted, guiding the other one into the tub and wrapping his arms around him and opening his legs for him to sit between. They settled into position fairly quickly, almost like they had done this before. It was clearly the only way that the two of them could fit in the tub at the same time. “This is like, bath time with bros. Shit-- Rans, did you remember the duck?”

“Oh, fuck, yeah I did! Hey, Larissa, could you grab the rubber ducky from my backpack? It’s super important.”

Lardo shifted her gaze to the backpack Ransom had left by the door and scooted over to grab it. Sure enough, a large rubber duck was sitting in the biggest pocket. She tossed it into the tub, ignoring the boys’ yelps about the ensuing splash.

They settled down quickly enough, though, and Holster glanced up at her. “Did you start the timer?”

She shook her head. “Are you sure this is allowed?”

Ransom stopped trying to balance the duck on Holster’s head and looked up at her, brows raised. “I don’t know. Is it allowed?”

Lardo made a face. Did she fucking stutter? If they were going to be difficult about this, then how was she ever going to--

She looked at the boys again, and realized that Ransom’s expression wasn’t teasing, but open. Oh. Oh. He wasn’t asking because he was avoiding giving her a straight answer. He was asking because she was the one calling the shots.

She shrugged. He was right, she supposed. “It’s allowed as long as you can still find a way to keep your shoulders under,” she said, not completely sure of herself, but doing her best to sound like she was. The mopey one-- Jack, his name was Jack-- had explained to her that the goal of the ice baths was to reduce soreness in areas of high contact, especially for defensemen like these two.

The tub was filled nearly to the rim and they were both sprawled out to keep their shoulders under, so she figured it was fine.

God, how she was wrong.

Her first mistake was getting up to check on the boys downstairs. Jack had said he had it covered, but she wanted to make sure the rest of the team was getting into dry clothes and waiting for the numbness to go away before trying to walk home. Her brain was filled with awful images of hockey players clumsily stumbling across campus and crashing through the ice of the pond. God, that would be a lot of paperwork.

Jack, though, had the others under control. A few of them had started boiling water for instant hot chocolate, and the rest were sprawled out in the living room with towels and blankets.  
Satisfied that everything was under control, she had only just gotten back to the base of the stairs when she heard a loud CRASH from above.

“Oh, shit.” She bounded up the stairs two at a time, and judging from the sound of steps behind herself, Jack was doing the same (albeit, four steps at a time. Damn these tall athletes).

She threw the door of the bathroom open, already prepared for-- well, she wasn’t quite sure. A hockey player knocked out and concussed on the floor? The entire bathroom destroyed by water damage? Naked dudes? She wasn’t sure.

As it turned out, what she had to deal with was a crack, maybe half a foot long, in the side of the bathtub. The two in the tub were both sat up and peering down at it, shocked.

“The fuck did you do?” Lardo shouted, dropping to her knees to survey the damage up close.

“Uh. Ice wrestling?” Ransom said, already sheepish.

Holster was flushed. “I guess it got a little rough. He started tickling.”

“You’re the one who kicked the tub!”

“You touched my knee! You know I’m sensitive about that!”

Before their argument could escalate into any more property damage, Jack, thank god, stepped in. “Get out. Your time’s almost up anyways, and if you’re sore tomorrow, you deserve it.”

Without any hesitation the two stood, water seeping everywhere. Lardo quickly grabbed their towels and held them far away, refusing to hand them over until they had stopped dripping. When she finally let them step out of the tub, she stood in front of them, hands on her hips, and did her best to look intimidating while she craned her neck to look up at them.

“I’m going to let Jack deal with your punishment for that one, but if we need a new tub, you’re splitting the cost,” she said, before nodding for them to get on their way.

Thankfully, closer examination and a messy duct tape job from Shitty seemed to do the trick and prevented any leakage issues, but the point remained that Lardo was never going to allow two players to share an ice bath ever again.

 

**48b. Clothes aren’t optional.**

“‘Kay, time’s up. You can get out now.” Lardo stopped the alarm on her phone and stifled a yawn. This was by far the most difficult stretch of ice bath duty. She liked talking to Shitty, sure, but it was mostly him talking while she listened, and she liked to use that time to multitask. She’d learned from experience, however, that it was best to put away her laptop when it was Shitty’s turn in the tub. He was a splasher.

Thankfully, the only one left to go after this was Jack, and he was the most relaxed out of any of them. After that it would only be a few minutes of drying off and getting dressed before he and Shitty were all set, and she knew they would gladly walk her back to her dorm.

And, speak of the devil, there Jack was now, entering the room with his towel slung over his shoulder. “Is Shitty all set?”

Lardo nodded, not looking up from her phone, where she was already preparing the timer for Jack’s bath. “Once he moves his ass, it’s all yours.”

Shitty eagerly rose from the tub, but only made it to a crouch before Jack yelped. Jack Zimmermann, yelping! Lardo really did see something new every day.

“Christ, Shits! You were naked in there?”

“Uh, yeah? It’s totally not as bad as you’d think. Like, everything goes numb after two minutes. Everything.”

“That’s-- more than I wanted to know. Don’t try to distract me. Now I have to sit in your-- your dick water.”

Shitty guffawed. “My dick water is fantastic, thank you very much. You’re the last one to get in anyway. The water was already nasty before I got in.”

Jack tried again. “Lardo’s in here!”

“Lardo was aware and averting her eyes because she’s smart,” Lardo interrupted.

“You don’t have to do that. He can respect boundaries if you ask, sometimes,” Jack said, shooting Shitty a look. “There’s a difference between being comfortable and making other people uncomfortable.

“It wasn’t weird! You’re the one who made it weird, bruh.”

Lardo nodded, but she was running out of apps to refresh on her phone. Her distraction technique was becoming too obvious, and Shitty noticed and gave and exasperated sigh.

“Now it’s weird!” He complained, grabbing for his towel and wrapping it around his waist. “It was fine as long as we didn’t talk about it.

Jack shrugged, already having moved on to stripping off his shirt.

Shitty shook off the water from his hair like a wet dog, and Lardo was very glad she hadn’t gotten her laptop out yet. “You know what?” he started, and then continued when neither of them responded, “I have a new rule: we gotta wear at least boxers or something for ice baths.”

“That’s…” Jack trailed off, selecting his word choice carefully. “Shockingly mature of you,” he finally finished.

“It’s law,” said Lardo, finally diving for her laptop bag as Shitty left the room.

 

**48c. Keep feet above water.**

“Um-- Lardo?” Eric was still tentative around Lardo, addressing her almost timidly. Well-- maybe not quite timid, but still more polite than he needed to be. She had a feeling that this kid always erred on the side of politeness, but he’d clearly reached a level of comfort with the boys that he didn’t feel yet with her. Granted, he’d only just met her two weeks prior, but that was besides the point. She needed her boys to be comfortable with her. That was just plain good sense as a manager.

He definitely sounded wary now, and Lardo sat up straight from where she’d been slouching over her laptop and looked over at the tub. Not just wary, but shaky. “What’s up?”

“I know these are supposed to be c-c-cold, but my toes are turning a funny color?” He said, teeth chattering.

“Your toes? Your toes aren’t supposed to be--” Lardo cut herself off as she set her laptop to the side and rushed over to the tub. “Jesus Christ! You’re supposed to keep your feet above water!”

Bitty’s started, shrinking away from her, and Lardo backed up a bit, making a mental note not to raise her voice quite as much around this one.

He recovered quickly, though.“Nobody told me that!” he said, lifting his feet out of the water. Sure enough, Bitty’s toes were turning a mottled red, almost purple.

“Oh, shit.” Lardo stood up, sticking out a hand to lean against the bathroom wall for balance. “Sit tight for just a sec, okay? Keep your feet out.” As much as she hated to disturb his privacy, she figured this was an okay time to open the door of the bathroom that led straight into Jack’s room and did so immediately.

Jack, sat at his desk with a textbook in front of him, looked up. “What is it?”

“Get the fuck in here right now,” Lardo said, and Jack jumped up from his desk chair, no questions asked, and followed her into the room.

“Are you--” he paused when he saw Bitty in the tub, shivering and pale, frostnipped feet propped on the side of the tub. “Bittle. Get out of the tub right now.”

Lardo backed away as Jack grabbed Bitty’s towel from where it had been folded on the toilet seat, holding it out for him to step into.

“Um. I don’t think I can really stand right now?” Bitty said, still quiet. Jesus. Maybe Lardo should have noticed something was up when he’d stopped chattering about his cousin or aunt or whatever it was he’d been going on about.

Jack dropped the towel and leaned down to grab Bitty by the arm, ignoring his protests. “Jack-- I don’t know your middle name-- Jack Zimmermann! Don’t do that, I’m all wet!”

Lardo resisted the joke potential there and picked up the towel from the floor while Jack lifted Bitty out of the tub, holding him up until he could figure out how to place his numb feet to stand upright. Lardo handed Jack the towel and watched as he carefully wrapped it around Bitty’s shoulders, gentle and slow.

“It’s Laurent,” he said, hands still on Bitty’s shoulders.

“What?” Bitty lifted a hand to wipe at a trail of water that had spilled over from his dripping hair onto his forehead.

“My middle name. Where are your dry clothes?”

“Oh. Oh-- they’re in my bag,” Bitty said, nodding to the messenger back lying on the floor next to where Lardo had been sitting. She bent down to pick it up and handed it to Jack, who opened it up and took out Bitty’s clothes.

“Do you need help getting dressed?” Jack asked, straight-faced and flat-voiced, although Bitty’s eyes widened.

“Gosh, no! I can manage,” Bitty said, although his clumsy attempts to grab his shirt suggested otherwise.

Jack looked at Lardo, then let it go. “We’ll give you a minute to change. Then come to my room.” He opened the door open so Lardo could step through, then followed her and closed it behind himself to give Bitty privacy.

“Yell if you need us!” Lardo said as the door closed.

She looked to Jack for permission to get on his bed, and took his nod as an okay for her to jump up and settle there with her laptop while he left to get some more blankets from the hall closet. Bitty still hadn’t finished by the time he returned, so he sat back at his desk chair and got back to his reading.

Bitty finally exited the bathroom a few minute after that, dressed in dry sweatpants and a tshirt, cheeks flushed either from warming back up or from embarrassment.

“Um.” He cleared his throat.“I’m really sorry about making a fuss. I guess I should have known. I thought I was the only one out of y’all who couldn’t handle the ice,” Bitty said, laughing nervously.

“We should have made sure you knew to keep your feet out beforehand,” Jack said, gruffly, but in a tone that Lardo recognized as his default I’m-worried-but-I-don’t-want-to-show-it voice. “Sit down,” he said, motioning to the bed. “Shitty’s gonna bring up hot chocolate in a minute.”

“I thought you said hot chocolate was unnecessary sugar that’s going to keep everyone up too late?” Bitty replied, and Lardo settled down somewhat. He couldn’t be too poorly off if he was comfortable enough to tease Jack.

“You get a pass just this once, I guess.”

Lardo watched this entire exchange with a smirk, then turned and re-entered the bathroom without saying a word. They’d had enough issues during fall semester that she would gladly leave them alone for some one-on-one bonding. Especially when she had ten more guys who needed ice baths before it got too late. It was time to, you know, manage them.

 

**48d. And if someone actually enjoys their ice bath? Don’t worry about it.**

  
By the time Bitty moved into the Haus at the beginning of his sophomore year, he was fairly proud of the progress he’d made with ice baths. Sure, he shivered more than anyone else and felt like he was dying the entire time, but at least he could last the whole twelve minutes and knew to keep his feet above water. It was progress.

He had not, however, ever seen Jack take one. After all, Jack seemed to view the whole procedure as another aspect of the captainly sacrifices he had to make and graciously took the last bath every time. That, or he didn’t want to deal with any of his teammates whining about having to sit in everyone else’s sweat and grime.

What this meant was that he’d always taken his baths long after Bitty had gone back to his freshman dorm. This year, though, Bitty was living just across the hall from the bathroom where the team did their ice bath procedure, so when the time came for Jack’s bath, he was still sitting with Lardo on the bathroom floor, attempting to do some practice problems for the science gen ed he was taking. Key word: attempting-- he’d mostly just been scrolling through his Pinterest feed for the past twenty minutes.

Jack entered the room and Bitty dutifully kept his eyes on his laptop screen while his captain took off his shirt and entered the tub. He managed to keep from staring for a full minute before he couldn’t help it anymore. “Aren’t you going to get into the--”

Jack was in the tub.

“What? When did you get in there? Are you okay?” Bitty craned his neck just so he could see into the tub and confirm that, yes, Jack was sitting with his entire body in ice water, and that it hadn’t all suddenly melted and turned into a nice jacuzzi.

Jack cocked his head. “Um. Lardo? How long?”

Lardo leaned over and hit the home button on her phone to turn it on. “Forty seconds,” she read aloud.

“What?” Bitty looked almost as shocked as he had when the infamous Beyoncé album drop occurred. “What?! What do you mean, you already got in?”

Jack’s brow was furrowed. “I got into the tub and now I’m in the tub?”

“And you didn’t even react?!” Bitty said, voice pitched up an octave, incredulous. “Who are you?”

By this point, Jack had a little half smirk and was settling into the tub more, exaggerating how comfortable he was. “Yeah. It’s easier than a polar plunge, eh?” said Jack, closing his eyes as he settled down again, completely unaware that Bitty had know idea what he was talking about. “It’s kind of nice.”

Bitty couldn’t even form a coherent response to this and instead just sputtered for a minute. “Lardo! Please tell me you’re seeing this.”

Lardo looked up. She’d been trying very hard to ignore them up until then. “Uh, yeah. He’s always like that. Him, Holster, and Ransom-- they’re all from pretty cold places. They whine the least.”

“I do not whine!” Bitty said, shaking his head.

Jack and Lardo shared a look, and made a mutual unspoken agreement not to entertain that with an answer.

“It’s just not a big deal for me,” Jack said, stifling a yawn. It was getting pretty late. “I could stay in here for a while.”

Bitty swiveled to fix Lardo with a long stare. She interpreted it as something along the lines of, are you kidding me?

Lardo shrugged and nodded at Jack. “Whatever, man. You know the drill. As long as you’re out by the end of twelve minutes, you’re good.”

Bitty shook his head and mumbled to himself about ridiculous Canadians and their ridiculous tolerance for cold, but did eventually get back to work, so Lardo counted it as a victory.

Ice baths? She totally had that covered.

**Author's Note:**

> Several of these tips are based on true events. Jack is me and I am Jack.  
> I am 100% a Night at the Museum apologist.  
> Also, before you ask where the frogs are? Lardo had already streamlined her ice bath approach by the time they came around. Or maybe the frogs were just perfect at ice baths. Good job, boys.
> 
> Please comment, and check out my tumblr @hockeydyke !


End file.
